Description

Architects Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Johannes Norlander are playing to the Internet generation with their ‘A+B’ prototype show house cell: this complete single-room dwelling, conceived as an integral whole, is intended for online ordering. Linked with this is an innovative approach to residential building that fundamentally questions residential architecture’s artificial and individual ‘design concept’. The prefabricated basic module is offered with extension packages like kitchen, shower, heating, solar cells and individual paintwork. It can be used as an add-on element in hospital construction or as a kiosk or toilet unit, as well as for homes. The module’s basic area is only 11.2 m²., so it is not an alternative to the conventional house; but this unit, first presented at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2002, points the way forward for further developments in alternative prefabricated living.

The special quality of this element lies in its uniform integrity as a miniature of the classical gable-roof house. There is no intention to fit parts together, no walls, windows or rooftop additions added in random sequence. This is to be an ‘object’, a formal figure modifiable only to a limited extent and fixed in its dimensions. This takes the living-cell into the realm of the aestheticized ‘design product’, but its discreet irony makes it highly inspiring as a critique of the conventional dwelling.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.